NHL: Flyers will miss Read's scoring

PHILADELPHIA — Mike Knuble has been back in Philadelphia for less than a month. So you can’t really blame him for not immediately understanding a question posed to him after the Flyers feebly fell to the Florida Panthers 5-2 Thursday night.

Asked what it felt like to lose his club’s leading scorer, Knuble frowned and said, “Who’s that?”

That would be Matt Read, the easy to overlook second-year forward out six weeks due to torn rib cage muscles suffered Wednesday night in a wrenching, draining win in Pittsburgh. Once it was clarified to Knuble who that missing leading scorer was, he had no problem echoing many of his teammates’ feelings

Read’s a big loss, no matter how overshadowed he tends to be.

“It’s too bad for him. He was off to a great start,” Knuble said. “It’s too bad for us, too. We’re going to miss him, but again, there’s not a lot of time to worry. We have to start preparing for our game Saturday and get back on track.”

The Flyers will try to do just that against the Winnipeg Jets in a 1 o’clock matinee at Wells Fargo Center. While the lousy loss to Florida could fairly be blamed at least in part to tired Flyers legs, don’t think they get a break with lowly Winnipeg on the near horizon.

The Jets (and Atlanta Thrashers before them) have won in six straight visits to Philadelphia, and are 10-2-1 in the past 13 meetings with the Flyers overall. Along with this, goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, who has gone from terrific from Day 1 to decidedly sub-par the past two games, apparently pronounced in a radio interview Friday that he was tired. Little wonder. Bryzgalov has started 17 of the Flyers’ NHL-high 19 games played so far.

You get the feeling a lot of people are tired. And if you don’t get the feeling, just listen to what Kimmo Timonen said after that Panthers loss.

“I usually don’t make up excuses ... but you saw a tired Flyers team today,” Timonen said. “Coming back from a six-game road trip; we played a really hard-charged game (against the Penguins). Getting two points and getting in at 2 o’clock ... we were tired today.”

Now, eagerly looking forward to the return of long injured Scotty Hartnell next week, the Flyers’ tired forwards have to deal with life without Read.

“It’s tough,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “That line (Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek and Read) had gotten put together and there was so much chemistry with it. You go back at the end of the (Penguins) game and look at the scoring chances that line created and they were in the teens together. When that gets pulled apart, it’s a little difficult to stick somebody in there.”

That problem still exists, although it’s believed general manager Paul Holmgren might be doing something other than anxiously waiting on a Hartnell return to patch up the hole on his team’s top line. Rookie Tye McGinn took Read’s place against the Panthers, and it’s uncertain if he’ll be back there again Saturday.

“I thought Tye did a good job,” Laviolette said. “He went out and tried to give us some skating and physicality on the line, but certainly there was some chemistry with Matt. To take him out of the lineup ... he is a guy that does everything. He plays point on the power play. He can play left wing, center, and right wing on penalties. So he’s a valuable piece to the puzzle.”

One possible scenario would be for second-line center Danny Briere to move back to wing on the top line, and perhaps drop McGinn down to his spot. Either way, Briere said, “There’s no feeling sorry for yourself or feeling sorry for the team. We’d lost Hartnell, and it’s all part of the game. It’s all part of the way things are rolling this season.

“We’ve had to deal with (injuries) all the time,” Briere added. “It seems the last few years, we’ve had some pretty big ones. But we have to keep going; keep moving forward. I don’t think that’s an excuse we can use.”